Is this what it feels like to have been hit by a Mac truck? I wondered as we limped back to the changing stations with the elf in tow. It was a miracle no one spied us, because I was certain no one in my family could explain why we were so beat up and leading an elven woman. Bright pink rope burns encircled both wrists and thin, red welts peppered my calves and lower back from where the elf's magic grass ensnared me. Getting changed was a complete and total bitch, but I managed to struggle into my shirt and pants.

Garnet and I said our good-byes in the parking lot, after I promised to keep her informed. Pinky-swore, no less.

"What do you think you're doing?" Mom called out as I reached for the handle to the driver's side door.

I pivoted, eyebrows raised. "Getting into my car?"

She crossed the parking lot to stand next to me. "Give me the keys," she said, holding out a hand. "I don't want you driving like this."

Immediately, stubbornness snapped into place. "I'm fine, Mom."

Mom folded her arms and looked at me sternly. "No, you're not. I could see those welts a mile away. Give me the keys. I want you to ride with your father and keep an eye on Leihalani."

I blinked, momentary kicked out of our argument. "Leiha—what?"

"The girl," Mom said, tipping her head in the direction of Dad's truck. "That's her name."

Well, that was better than calling her "the elf". "When did she tell you that?"

"When we were walking back. You and Rachael were too busy comparing bruises."

Oh.

"Now, give me your keys," Mom repeated, gesturing towards my hand.

I sighed. "Fine." Slapping the keys into her palm, I gingerly turned around and limped towards Dad's black pick-up.

"What're you doing here?"

Rachael looked up from the back seat as I yanked the passenger side door open. "Keeping Leihalani company. Uncle Terry said I could," she added, lifting her chin defensively. Next to her, the elven woman's lips quirked in a small smile.

Shrugging, I hauled my ass into the truck and slammed the door shut. What did I care if Rachael rode with us? Pain makes you pissy, Michaels, I thought, grimacing as I struggled to pull on the seat belt.

The driver's side door opened and Dad climbed in. "All buckled up, girls?" he asked, looking around the cab.

"Yup," Rachael announced cheerfully.

"Yes," Leihalani replied, patting the seat belt that somehow managed to look out of place against her elven clothes.

Dad shot me a look, then shrugged. Rachael must have helped the elf put it on. "Off we go, then."

No sooner did we pull out of the parking lot then Rachael began peppering Leihalani with questions.

"So, are you a princess or something?" Rachael asked eagerly.

I laughed softly to myself, pillowing my aching jaw on the cool window glass. Yeah, we definitely captured a princess.

Leihalani snorted, a soft, surprised sound. It was so unexpected that I looked over my shoulder at the elf, eyebrows raised curiously. "Ah ... no," she said, coughing slightly. "I'm a tsaebach's daughter."

"What's that?"

"I suppose the best translation would be grand landowner."

"Oh," Rachael said. "Like a duke or something, right?"

"I'm unfamiliar with that term."

I didn't know when my cousin became a royal family expert, but she was happy to explain the various titles. I leaned against the window and listened with half an ear. Lord, I couldn't wait to get home and pop a couple of aspirin.

Someone must have texted my grandparents as to what happened, for they were waiting for us when we pulled up to the house. Their eyes widened as Leihalani slipped from the cab with a sort of grace I could only attempt in leopard form. Before anyone could speak, she went right to them, took my grandmother's hands in her own and bowed.

"Thank you for opening your home to me," Leihalani said as my grandmother gaped, open-mouthed, at the elven woman. "I am honored to be here."

"Oh!" Nana exclaimed, flushing. "You're very welcome ... ?"

"Leihalani."

"Leihalani, yes," Nana repeated, stumbling slightly over the name. "Please, let me show you inside ..."

Lucas and Wyatt pulled up in Lucas's Challenger with Mom not far behind in my car. They got out of the cars, only to stare as Nana led the elven woman into the house. Mom came up to me, tossed me my keys and ran in to join them.

"I take it that you didn't call John," Grandpa noted, glancing over his shoulder at the house. Tucking his hands into the pockets of his worn work jeans, he let his gaze linger on each one of us in turn.

"We didn't exactly have time to do that, Dad," my father explained.

"Yeah, we were too busy getting our asses handed to us," Lucas grumbled, rubbing his shoulder.

Grandpa frowned, purple eyes snapping to the wounds on Lucas's face.

"What are they going to do, Grandpa?" I asked before he could say anything more. Slowly, my grandfather pivoted to me and cocked his head, wolf-like. I swallowed in the face of his full clan leader attention, but soldiered on. "Honestly? Call up a task force and storm their way through the Gate?" A new thought occurred to me as Grandpa's eyebrows lifted a notch. "And can we really have the military raiding an entirely new world? One that we have no idea about?" I pointed to the house. "She wields earth-magic. Who knows what an entire population can do?"

Not that we didn't have witches and shifters in the military. But this was magic of an entirely different breed.

"She certainly held her own against all of us," Wyatt grumbled, still sore about the whole experience—physically and emotionally.

"She was throwing us around like it was nothing," Rachael interjected eagerly. I glanced side-long at my cousin; none of that had been fun.

Grandpa paused and rubbed his hand across his face. Suddenly, he looked old. It was a rather frightening observation, especially for a shifter. We were pretty much immune to the ravages of time. "Were there any witnesses?" he finally asked.

"None," Dad replied promptly.

Thank God.

Grandpa looked over at my cousins with a critical eye, Lucas in particular. "Really? That's impressive."

"Not if you were there," Lucas rumbled, eyes narrowing.

God, he wouldn't let that go, would he? I really hoped Lucas managed to keep his big boy pants on throughout this ordeal.

"I see," Grandpa noted slowly. "If she is as powerful as you say, why is she alone in the house with Joy and Selene?"

He spoke as if Nana and Mom were merely human. We all heard stories of how badass of a wolf Nana had been in her youth.

"She promised to help us find Jimmy," I told him.

Grandpa folded his arms. "Very well. Let's bring this discussion inside, shall we?"

"Your homes are fascinating," Leihalani said, wandering around with open interest. We all sat in my grandparents' large living room, waiting for the pizzas to arrive. Auntie Kristi and Uncle Joe were there, as well as Richard, Laura and little Cybele. There had been some hesitation about whether we should let Laura in on the secret, but Richard was firm that he wouldn't lie to his wife.

Apparently, Laura was upset that her brother had failed in keeping us updated, especially since we had helped him as he asked. We hadn't always gotten along, especially in the early days of her dating my brother, but we had learned to accept each other over the years. It was actually nice to have her support.

"What are elven homes like?" Auntie Kristi asked, leaning forward on the couch.

"Do you live in the trees?" Rachael added eagerly, only to be hushed by her mother.

Leihalani chuckled. "No, they are very much like yours, except without all the sharp angles." She gestured vaguely towards the ceiling. "We tend to favor wide, sweeping lines and organic shapes in our dwellings. But the furniture is largely the same. Except for these objects," she said, turning to study the wide-screen TV on the wall. "You humans always seem so fascinated by them. Why is that, exactly?"

Rachael was only too happy to give the elven woman a crash course on electronics, technology, and American culture. She jumped up from the couch, pulled out her cell phone, and hustled right over to Leihalani.

I glanced at my aunt, but she merely threw up her hands and leaned back in her chair. Rachael was a serious force of nature.

When the pizzas arrived, Leihalani eagerly sampled all the food and appetizers, but she eschewed offers of soda and beer. Instead, she asked for and received a bottle of water.

"So," my father said as we all were occupied with eating, "perhaps we can start discussing plans for bringing Jimmy home?"

Uncle Joe coughed, drawing eyes in his direction. "What I'd like to know is why elves would take him in the first place." He looked directly at Leihalani.

Leihalani set down her slice of pizza—her third already—and wiped her hands clean on a napkin. "In all honesty, I cannot say."

"You can't?" Lucas interjected, earning an elbow in the ribs from Wyatt.

"Shut up," Wyatt told his older brother.

A bear-like growl rumbled up from Uncle Joe's throat. "Enough, Lucas Alan Michaels," he warned. Lucas flinched, muttered what sounded like a half-hearted apology under his breath, and stuffed pizza in his mouth.

I sighed and shook my head. Wolves.

But Leihalani didn't seem to be offended. "There could be a dozen different reasons why someone crossed the Gate and took the boy."

A small knot of dread formed in my belly. "Pedophiles?" I asked quietly.

"Ritual sacrifice?" Rachael said at the same time.

"Rachael!" her mother exclaimed. "If you can't—"

"Well, that's what she implied!" my cousin cried out, gesturing to the elven woman.

Calmly, Leihalani raised her hands. "It was not my intention to cause alarm."

A stray thought blossomed and wormed its way to the forefront of my mind. "What about changelings?" We were talking to an elf, after all, shouldn't at least some of the old stories be true?

"What's that?" someone in the room asked.

"It's when a human baby is swapped out for one made of sticks and moss," I told them, eyes fixed on the elf.

Leihalani acknowledged me with a nod. "Yes," she answered, drawing the word out slowly. "That is an unfortunate era in our history, I am afraid. But there hasn't been a need for that in centuries."

"Something like that did happen?" Nana asked.

"Yes. When the High Fae sundered us from this plane nearly two thousand years ago, an unfortunate side effect was a low birth-rate. So our people took to stealing human children to supplement the ones that were lost."

Sundering? High Fae? There were so many new terms being thrown out, all wrapped up in a world that never existed until today. What made perfect sense to Leihalani was absolutely foreign to me—and to everyone else, no doubt.

Mom tapped the fingers of one hand on her knee. "So there is a chance that Jimmy was taken by an elven woman looking for a child to raise?"

"I hesitate to say 'no', but if you indeed tracked the boy's scent to the Gate, then it is a distinct possibility."

Rachael, in addition to grilling Leihalani about elves, had also told her the whole story leading up to her capture.

Leaning back in his recliner, Grandpa cracked his knuckles. "So, miss, how do you propose that we find the boy?"

"I would have to take you through the Gate and into the SummerKingdom. We can begin our search in the surrounding villages. I doubt someone would travel all the way south from elsewhere in the kingdom." She paused to take a bite of pizza, washing it down with a sip of water.

"And if you find nothing in these villages?" Uncle Joe asked.

She hesitated. "Then ... I would have to enlist my brother's help. Everfell, his est—er, home, is within a day's journey from the Gate."

My ears pricked up at Leihalani's quick change of words. Was she holding back information or was it merely a slip in translation? No one else seemed to pick up on it, so it just might have been my misinterpretation.

"Your brother?" Dad wanted to know.

Leihalani took another sip of water, then brushed hair out of her silvery eyes. "Yes, my brother has access to many resources."

"Oh."

The elf looked around the room. "You have something with which to track the boy, do you not?"

Oh, shit.

"No," Dad said, swearing.

All eyes swung to Laura. "You know very well that John's not going to give up evidence," she said, pausing to pull a toy from Cybele's mouth as my niece played on the floor.

Well, we were certainly screwed, weren't we? Unless Detective Merrickson decided to suddenly open up to us.

Rachael suddenly stood, a sheepish look on her face. "Uhm, I think I can help with that," she said.

Before anyone could speak, she ran out the door only to return a few minutes later with a whiffle ball. Walking over to Grandpa, she held it out to him.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, turning it around.

Rachael locked her hands behind her back and began to rock back and forth on the balls of her feet. "Uhm, so, remember when the cops chased us out of the woods and we ran back to the Grabowskis' to get our clothes?" she began, looking over at my father. "I saw this whiffle ball sitting there among all the toys and thought to myself—I could take this so we could try and track him later."

"Rachael!" Auntie Kristi and Uncle Joe reprimanded at the same time. "You took evidence from a crime scene!" my aunt cried in disbelief.

My cousin had the good grace to blush, but she wasn't cowed. "And if I didn't take it?" she asked, drawing herself up and looking around the room. "Then we wouldn't have anything to track him in the SummerKingdom!"

"As if we'd let you go!" Auntie Kristi exclaimed vehemently.

"But—"

Grandpa rolled the whiffle ball carefully around with his fingertips. "Enough." The single word quieted my cousin and her parents. "While I don't advocate stealing from a crime scene, this is exactly what we need. The problem then remains, who goes with Leihalani?" Before anyone could answer, Grandpa did so for them. "This journey would likely take days, if not weeks, am I correct?"

"It very well could," she agreed evenly. It was hard to tell what her thoughts were on all this family squabbling. But she said she had a brother, so maybe she understood it in some part.

Grandpa sighed. "If he were still in Streamfield, I'd have no problem letting all of the clan search for him—but the reality is, we are in the midst of our busy season. I can't spare anyone for that long of a period."

Rachael made a sound of disbelief, only to be quelled by her mother.

I didn't blame her. Hadn't we gone through the trouble of bringing an actual elf home to help with the case and now Grandpa just wanted us to drop it?

My fists curled against my sides and I bit my lip. Something was calling to me, I could feel it. And it definitely didn't want me sitting behind a desk, taking phone calls. Maybe this is what I had been looking for.

"You can spare me, Grandpa," I said, rising.

"Hm?"

"I'll go back with Leihalani and find Jimmy."

"Aly ..." my parents said at the same time, a warning on their lips.

"Seriously, I want to go. You can hire someone else to replace me on a temporary basis. I'll even forego my paycheck."

Grandpa hesitated and licked his lips, eyes shifting around the room.

"Aly," Nana said, leaning forward, "it's brave of you to volunteer, dear, but it's far too dangerous ..."

I loosed a long, exasperated sigh and tossed my hands in the air. "Who else is going to find him, Nana? I want to go—I ... have to go." Those last words came out on top of an unintentional sob. Plopping back down on the couch, I dashed tears from my eyes. "I have to go," I mumbled, looking at the floor.

"You really don't like desk work, do you?" Grandpa asked gently.

My chin lifted sharply. "It's not like that—" I loved my family, but I knew that I couldn't spend the rest of my life as a receptionist.

Grandpa chuckled wryly. "I understand." He took a deep breath and glanced at my parents. Mom slowly shook her head, but remained silent. Dad stared at his hands. "You're right, of course. We started this. One of us should end it."

A giddy laugh bubbled up in my throat and I clamped my lips together tightly to keep it from coming out. God, I didn't think that would actually work! I looked over at the elf to see how she was reacting to all of this.

Leihalani lifted her gaze from her pizza and offered me a little nod.

I took a deep breath. Okay, I could do this.

I hope.